I have been to Turkey almost every summer holiday of my life and pretty much only on summer holidays, which makes me a very shallow Turk indeed.

We are in the realm not of logic but of wistfulness, and I must maintain that wistfulness is a respectable, serious condition. How, otherwise, to account for much of one's life?

Who has the courage to set right those misperceptions that bring us love?

I certainly want to continue to write in a way that's intimate. I love books where you feel you're having a romance with the writer.

If what you want to do is write, then it's madness not to do it.

Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day.

I was just a boy on a boat in the universe.

The greater the novel, the more it is apt to embody the special, non-replicable properties of the written medium.

One of the great pluses of being an immigrant is you get to start again in terms of your identity. You get to shed the narratives which cling to you.

New York interposed itself, once and for all, between me and all other places of origin.

It won't be long before we'll be deafened by the screeches of whistles being blown by whistle-blowers blowing the whistle on themselves.

If God fairness, impartiality, equity, are his essence, that should become dominant in any society

Whoever said "It's not whether you win or lose that counts " probably lost.

Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.

Ninety-five per cent of my time is virtually wasted.

My motto is to keep it simple stupid, work smart not hard.

I have awards right now that I do not remember walking on stage to get.

Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy.

Hey, wait a minute, I was a Spice Girl once!

Mr Robert Montgomery's genius [is] far too free and aspiring to be shackled by the rules of syntax? [His] readers must take such grammar as they can get and be thankful.

One good thing the teaching has given me is the ability to read and revise my own work.